Views and Reviews | Page 6

the thoughts, the passion, the poetry, the
humour, are of the best, but the expression is self-conscious, strained,
ignorant. Thackeray had no such blemish. He wrote dispassionately,
and he was a born writer. In him there is no hesitation, no fumbling, no
uncertainty. The style of Barry Lyndon is better and stronger and more
virile than the style of Philip; and unlike the other man's, whose latest
writing is his best, their author's evolution was towards decay.

His Mission.
He is so superior a person that to catch him tripping is a peculiar

pleasure. It is a satisfaction apart, for instance, to reflect that he has (it
must be owned) a certain gentility of mind. Like the M.P. in Martin
Chuzzlewit, he represents the Gentlemanly Interest. That is his mission
in literature, and he fulfils it thoroughly. He appears sometimes as Mr.
Yellowplush, sometimes as Mr. Fitzboodle, sometimes as Michael
Angelo Titmarsh, but always in the Gentlemanly Interest. In his youth
(as ever) he is found applauding the well-bred Charles de Bernard, and
remarking of Balzac and Dumas that the one is 'not fit for the salon,'
and the other 'about as genteel as a courier.' Balzac and Dumas are only
men of genius and great artists: the real thing is to be 'genteel' and
write--as Gerfeuil (sic) is written--'in a gentleman- like style.' A few
pages further on in the same pronouncement (a review of Jerome
Paturot), I find him quoting with entire approval Reybaud's sketch of 'a
great character, in whom the habitue of Paris will perhaps recognise a
certain likeness to a certain celebrity of the present day, by name
Monsieur Hector Berlioz, the musician and critic.' The description is
too long to quote. It sparkles with all the fadaises of anti-Berliozian
criticism, and the point is that the hero, after conducting at a private
party (which Berlioz never did) his own 'hymn of the creation that has
been lost since the days of the deluge,' 'called for his cloak and his
clogs, and walked home, where he wrote a critique for the newspapers
of the music which he had composed and directed.' In the Gentlemanly
Interest Mr. Titmarsh translates this sorry little libel with the utmost
innocence of approval. It is The Paris Sketch-Book over again. That
Monsieur Hector Berlioz may possibly have known something of his
trade and been withal as honest a man and artist as himself seems never
to have occurred to him. He knows nothing of Monsieur Hector except
that he is a 'hairy romantic,' and that whatever he wrote it was not Batti,
batti; but that nothing is enough. 'Whether this little picture is a
likeness or not,' he is ingenuous enough to add, 'who shall say?'
But,--and here speaks the bold but superior Briton--'it is a good
caricature of a race in France, where geniuses poussent as they do
nowhere else; where poets are prophets, where romances have
revelations.' As he goes on to qualify Jerome Paturot as a 'masterpiece,'
and as 'three volumes of satire in which there is not a particle of bad
blood,' it seems fair to conclude that in the Gentlemanly Interest all is
considered fair, and that to accuse a man of writing criticisms on his

own works is to be 'witty and entertaining,' and likewise 'careless,
familiar, and sparkling' to the genteelest purpose possible in this
genteelest of all possible worlds.

DISRAELI
His Novels.
To the general his novels must always be a kind of caviare; for they
have no analogue in letters, but are the output of a mind and temper of
singular originality. To the honest Tory, sworn to admire and unable to
comprehend, they must seem inexplicable as abnormal. To the
professional Radical they are so many proofs of innate inferiority: for
they are full of pretentiousness and affectation; they teem with
examples of all manner of vices, from false English to an immoral
delight in dukes; they prove their maker a trickster and a charlatan in
every page. To them, however, whose first care is for rare work, the
series of novels that began with Vivian Grey and ended with Endymion
is one of the pleasant facts in modern letters. These books abound in
wit and daring, in originality and shrewdness, in knowledge of the
world and in knowledge of men; they contain many vivid and striking
studies of character, both portrait and caricature; they sparkle with
speaking phrases and happy epithets; they are aglow with the passion
of youth, the love of love, the worship of physical beauty, the
admiration of whatever is costly and select and splendid--from a
countess to a castle, from a duke to a diamond; they are radiant with
delight in whatever is powerful or personal or attractive--from a cook to
a cardinal, from an